Highlights

Brazil survived a scare against a doughty Australian side in the women's football quarter-final

Goalkeeper Barbara of Brazil saves a penalty during the penalty shootout of the women's Soccer quarter final m... Read More

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil survived a scare against a doughty Australian side in the women's football quarter-final at Belo Horizonte late on Friday. The game was played at the same venue that witnessed the 7-1 rout of the men's side by Germany at the World Cup two years ago and while the ghost of the 2014 semi-final still swirls around the Mineirão, the stadium at Belo Horizonte, another significant piece of Brazilian football history, you could say, went a long way in being put to rest in its own unique way.
After a goalless 120 minutes between Brazil and the Matildas, it all came down to the shootout, and even despite Marta missing her penalty, Brazil were able to pull through 7-6 with goalkeeper Barbara saving twice - once against Katrina Gorry which negated the advantage the Australians earned after Marta's miss and then, palming out Alanna Kennedy's weak effort.

Barbara is an oddity in the Brazilian football scheme - she's a black goalkeeper. Traditionally - not just out of racist prejudice - black goalkeepers are considered taboo in Brazil. In a dubious mindset that exists in this football-mad country, black goalkeepers are not considered to be made of stern stuff, lacking in the essential fight when it comes to the crunch and often seen as crumbling under pressure. It is an unfair perception and owes its origin to as far back as the 1950 World Cup final at the newly-built Maracana, when tiny neighbours Uruguay beat a supremely confident Brazilian side to win the title. The episode, which came to be known as the Maracanazo, the fall of the Maracana, still manages to haunt and traumatise the Brazilian. Anything resembling a colossal setback or defeat is often compared to the Maracanazo.

And as with all things that is a historical collective scar, a society looks for a culprit, someone they can point they point the finger to in order to ease themselves of their pain, and perhaps, guilt. In the case of the Maracanazo, it was their goalkeeper Barbosa, a brave, skilful and safe pair of hand that manned the Brazil goal, and was considered the best goalkeeper in the world in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet, it was his final stages slip to let the ball from under him into the goal as Uruguay clawed back to an unlikely triumph, that he was forever remembered for.

As a nation searched for answers to this debacle, Barbosa was deemed guilty for Brazil's collective gloom and was shunned by a nation that once feted him. He died a bitter, penniless and forgotten man, a tragic hero who was never to blame. In the collective psychoanalysis that followed, it was felt that black men were not to be trusted with responsibility for they lacked the steel in face of extreme pressure, with a tendency to break. Brazilian national teams - with perhaps the exception of Dida in 2006 - have taken care not to pick a black goalkeeper ever since. In 2014, Scolari summoned an over 35 Julip Cesar who played semi-professional football in Canada to solve his goalkeeping problems, but wouldn't pick Jefferson, a black.

On Friday, Barbara showed no such nerves that Brazil usually associates black goalkeepers with, when she showed spunk to keep the Australian penalty takers at bay. Anybody watching the women's football match closely would have seen the coming of full circle. Here was a black goalkeeper exorcising the troubled ghost of one Barbosa. A little more search on Barbara revealed another insight, a divine justice of sorts. Barbara full name reads, Barbara Micheline do Monte Barbosa. When she denied Kennedy, who herself burst into tears, someone up there must have smiled, and shed a quiet tear.

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